Magazines Need Focus To Succeed, Loeb Says

November 13, 1986|By Kenneth Michael of The Sentinel Staff

Successfully starting up a mass-circulation magazine poses a series of frustrations and difficulties that would daunt all but the most optimistic of potential publishers, a Time Inc. executive said Wednesday.

Marshall Loeb, managing editor of Fortune magazine and former director of magazine development for Time, said that People is the only successful national weekly magazine started since 1974.

Loeb spoke to about 700 publishers, editors and executives of periodicals at the closing session of the annual Magazine Publishers Association conference, being held at the Wyndham Hotel.

Money magazine took eight years to become profitable, and Sports Illustrated took 10 years, Loeb said of two of Time's better-known publications.

He said that the company recently dropped plans to publish a weekly pictorial magazine because the advertising market ''is too soft to finance'' such a publication, even though market research indicated that it would attract a large number of readers.

Loeb said that a new magazine is more likely to be successful if it is aimed at a small ''how-to-do'' audience with specialized interests and is published monthly.

Despite the general difficulty in obtaining advertising support, Loeb said, Time will launch two magazines, Quality and Parenting, in the next few weeks because of their potential appeal to upper-income readers.